Ohio State Beats Minnesota 6-3 to Win Big Ten Tournament – Ohio State Buckeyes
5/25/2002 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
May 25, 2002
Box Score
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. – Ohio State claimed a 6-3 victory over Minnesota Saturday night at Minnesota’s Siebert Field to win the school’s sixth Big Ten Tournament Championship and earn the league’s automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament, which begins next week.
The appearance in the NCAA Tournament will be the 15th in school history and the eighth under current head coach Bob Todd. The complete 64-team field and regional host sites will be announced Monday at 12:30 p.m. on ESPN2.
Minnesota, which won the Big Ten regular season championship, beat Northwestern 11-5 Saturday afternoon to advance to the championship game against the Buckeyes and needed two wins against Ohio State if they were going to repeat as tournament champions after winning the 2001 tournament at Ohio State’s Bill Davis Stadium.
Ohio State, the home team despite playing on Minnesota’s home field, took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the second inning. Nick Swisher (Jr., Parkersburg, W.Va./Parkersburg) drew a lead off walk on four pitches and then moved to third on a double to left-centerfield by Joe Wilkins (Sr., Grove City, Ohio/Dublin Scioto). Swisher scored on a ground out by Drew Anderson (Fr., Brownsburg, Ind./Brownsburg) and then Wilkins scored on a ball hit off the tip of Gopher centerfielder Sam Steidl’s glove, which went as an error.
Minnesota capitalized on a Buckeye error in the top of the third inning to get on the board. David Roach doubled with one out and then Steidl hit a ball to shallow centerfield that went under the glove of OSU centerfielder Mike Rabin (Fr., West Chester, Ohio/Lakota East). That error allowed Steidl to reach second and scored Roach to make the score 2-1. Gopher designated hitter Ben Pattee tied the game 2-2 in the top of the fourth with his third home run of the season. Pattee got a hold of a Scott Lewis (Fr., Washington Court House, Ohio/Washington Court House) breaking ball and deposited it over the leftfield fence.
“It was interesting that early in the game both teams made errors,” Todd said. “But both countered that with home runs.”
But after that both teams hit the ball directly at the defense. Ohio State went down in order in the third and had walks in both the fourth and fifth innings, but that was all the Buckeyes could get against Gopher starter Jeff Moen until the sixth inning. After the Minnesota home run in the fourth inning, Lewis sat down 13 straight Gophers.
“Both teams hit the ball hard, but they hit it directly at people,” Todd said. “Lewis did a great job tonight.”
The Buckeyes took the lead in the sixth on the 12th home run of the season by Doug Deeds (So., Bexley, Ohio/Bexley). The lead off shot cleared the fence in left-centerfield to put Ohio State on top 3-2. Doug Dendinger (Sr., Greenwich, Ohio/South Central) doubled and moved to third on a wild pitch with just one out, but the Buckeyes could not get him across the plate. After a walk to Wilkins, Minnesota pulled Moen and brought in Tim Theis, who promptly struck out Anderson before getting pinch hitter Terry Pettorini to ground out.
“Eventually, we had some balls drop in,” Todd said. “Deeds’ home run was the key hit that broke their back and then the insurance run took things away from Minnesota.”
That run of insurance was proved in the seventh by Rabin, who had a two-out double to left centerfield. He was then knocked in by Deeds, who hit a bloop single over the outstretched arm of Gopher shortstop Scott Welch. The run gave Ohio State a two-run advantage, 4-2.
The Buckeyes added a pair of runs in the eighth before the Gophers got their final run in the top of the ninth inning.
Lewis pitched a complete game in giving up the three runs on just six hits. He struck out six and walked two in improving to 7-2 on the year. Moen got the loss to drop to 0-2.
“It felt good out there tonight once I started hitting my spots,” Lewis said. “I have a lot of confidence in my fast ball and got a lot of ground balls tonight, plus a few strikouts.”
Offensively for the Buckeyes, Deeds finished 2-for-5 with a pair of RBI. He was the only Ohio State player with multiple hits as the team only had nine hits. Ben Patte led the Gophers with a 2-for-4 effort with two RBI.
